#like people call it the punishment it is

[shenyaanigans]

vash having an eating disorder was not on my stampede saturday bingo card

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[worstloki]

there is a difference between being born to a throne, maliciously vying for a throne, stealing a throne, and having a throne thrust upon you when you are already in the midst of an identity crisis. And I fear Loki's place in the line of succession has people unable to differentiate between any of these

[khattikeri]

drives me nuts when people treat jin guangyao or wei wuxian like they're socialist revolutionaries like no! they're not!! in fact their respective roles in society and complacency regarding its hierarchies is why ANY of the story even happens to begin with!!!

jin guangyao doesn't hold bitterness just because he was born lower class. he is bitter because others deride him and his prostitute mother in spite of both their intelligence, skills, and efforts to climb the ladder.

why do you think we were shown scenes of other prostitutes in the brothel deriding meng shi for being literate, for "trying" so hard? why do you think we were shown scenes of anxin taunting meng yao and throwing shit at him because he was trying to learn cultivation at his mother's behest?

why do you think jin guangyao arranged for the arson of that brothel, burned to the ground with everyone except sisi inside? that's not the behavior of someone who believes in true equality and the inherent worth of sex workers as human beings!

that's the behavior of someone who thinks he's better than them. the behavior of a man who already came up on top through political games and war crimes, backstabbing and spying for the sake of the "greater good".

i won't rehash his argument to nie mingjue that he didn't have a choice-- he had some choice, but no matter what he does his class will come up and people will always assume the worst and try to hurt him for it, which forces his hand to do whatever will protect him best (hence 'no choice').

jin guangyao did everything he could to secure his own safety and a place among those already higher up. and by that point, he'd won it.

the fact that the temple rebuilt on the brothel site is to guanyin, the goddess of mercy, is even more ironic! the fact that jin guangyao has the goddess's statue carved to look like his own mother is proof that he viewed both her and himself as higher than them. more worthy than them.

of course he cared about the general welfare of others (read: the watchtowers). but consider also that there is no watchtower near yi city, which ended up being one of xue yang's playgrounds. jin guangyao can and will turn a blind eye to certain sufferings if it is convenient to him.

sure, jin guangyao made undeniable contributions to cultivation society and accessibility, but he is not at any point trying to topple existing class structures. his adherence to them is in fact integral to his own downfall in the end.

it brings with it the inevitability of society conveniently ignoring his triumphs and genuine moments of humanity to deride him once more as an evil, disgusting son of a whore once his crimes come to light.

now for wei wuxian. he's the righteous protagonist of the story and he doesn't give a fuck what society thinks, yes, but he wasn't out there trying to cause an uprising so that all the poor servant classes and lower could become cultivators. he wasn't trying to redistribute wealth or insinuate that those who are lower deserve to be viewed as equal to the gentry.

the most critical and non-explicitly stated fact of mo dao zu shi is that wei wuxian has always been resigned to his position in the social hierarchy.

his unreliable narration, especially regarding his own past and thoughts, is so damn important. he doesn't EVER tell the reader directly that people treated him any which way at their leisure because of his parents' differing social classes.

no. instead we are shown how much prestige he is afforded as cangse-sanren's son-- reputation as a talented and charming young cultivator, made head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang-- and how little respect he is given in the same breath, as the son of servant wei changze.

the way he is treated by others is as fickle as the wind. if he obeys and does as told, there is no reward. of course he did that, that was the expectation to start with! if he does anything even slightly inconvenient, there is a punishment. of course he has no manners, what else would you expect from an ungrateful son of a servant?

wei wuxian's righteousness is not a matter of adhering to principles he was explicitly taught, the way nie mingjue values honor or the way jiang cheng always tries to prove himself. wei wuxian does the right thing regardless of what the consequences are to him because his good deeds are always downplayed and his bad deeds are always singled out, no matter who or how many people were doing it with him.

he has faced this double standard since childhood. there are points in the novel where it's clear that this sticks out to wei wuxian, but does he ever fight back against that view of himself? does he EVER, at any point in the story, explain his actions and choices to jianghu society and try to debate or appeal to their sense of reason?

no. because he knows, at his very core, that any explicit deviation from their interests whatsoever will be punished.

slaughtering thousands of people is fine when they want him to do it, and when the alternative is unjust torture, re-education camps, and encroachment upon other sects' lands.

slaughtering thousands of people who are trying to paint him as evil for not going along with their genocidal plans, however, is punished.

wei wuxian knows his acceptance among the higher classes is superficial and unsteady. from the age of 10, when jiang fengmian took him in, he knew subconsciously that he could be kicked out at any time.

he knows that cultivation society doesn't care about war crimes and concentration camps and mistreatment of the remaining wen survivors of the sunshot campaign. but the right thing to do now that they aren't at wartime is to help them, plus they'd punish him either way for it, so he will.

in this regard wei wuxian is more self-aware of his position than jin guangyao. he does care about common people and he does try his best to help them as an individual. even if that ends up with him disabled, arrested, targeted in sieges, or dead.

but is he revolutionary? in the full equality, fight the establishment, rewrite laws, change social structures and people's perceptions of class sense?

no. no. he isn't.

now my knowledge of chinese society and history is fairly limited to my hindu diaspora upbringing and our shared cultural similarities ... but speaking to what i absolutely know us true, adherence to one's social class is expected.

this is rigid. efforts and merits might bring you some level of mobility, but in the end, the circumstances of your birth will always be scrutinized first, and your behavior compared to the stereotypes of where and how you originate.

mdzs is not about revolution, and none of its characters are able to truly change its society. there is no grand "maybe cutsleeves aren't inherently bad" or "i'm sorry for persecuting you and believing hearsay, you were truly a good person all along!" at the finale.

people ignore history and repeat it again with the next batch of ugly gossip and rumors.

wei wuxian, lan wangji, and luo qingyang find peace only by distancing themselves from cultivation society and its opinions.

jin guangyao and wei wuxian both cannot ever escape from others' perception of their origins and actions. regardless of their personal beliefs, they are not revolutionaries.

[slyandthefamilybook]

trying to come up with something pithy or incisive but honestly I just got nothing

"I will worship the Christian god if people die" is where we're at now, I guess

[crimson-nail]

annoying yaoi for my friend nico, the original klrw annoying yaoi enjoyer

[uncanny-tranny]

The worst lie you can believe and be told is that women are emotional and men are logical, that men's, essentially, men's emotions are logical and neutral while women's are not, and are in fact frivolous and shallow.

[flying-cat]

People don't want character redemption they want a revenge plot from a story that was never supposed to be about revenge

[bunisher]

i just…. still cannot believe that they had frank quote oscar wilde and wear purple and have a whole arc surrounding closeted gay men and expected me not to notice!!!

[ryssbelle]

Playing dnd with @frulleboi and @kenxboi be like

[satiwi1]

The psychological damage in media when the main character finds out someone close to them is dying and asks why they weren't told sooner only to realise it was because of their own negligence oh my god

[wheucto]

anyways. the "hell" in BFDI is not actually hell but rather an afterlife which resembles hell in looks. the only people who went there were people who died in trash compactors in the charades challenge, and nickel suggets that because they died in a similar manner they were sent to this afterlife. that implies that afterlives seem to be based on how you die, and this is the "crushed in a trash compactor in the charades challenge" afterlife.

[marxism-transgenderism]

..

[seaweedstarshine]

RIP Krakoa 🌹 I can’t lie I’ve been kinda behind since midway through Fall of X I’m gonna catch up before my first SDCC this summer but I hear Vulcan didn’t see much action anyway. Anyway my hand slipped and I found myself looking into the eyes of my canonically psychotic son the best Summers brother who’s never done anything wrong in his entire life, (he’s done lotsa wrong things but I love him more for it)

[smile-files]

just a kind word for all of you lovely folks out there: if you say the r-slur or you don't call out your friends for saying it then i hate your guts :)

[good-beans]

Who was gonna tell me that Yonah FUCKS !!!!!!!!!

I finally sat down to watch it and sudddenly realized why it made people so upset with Kotoko -- it's "get the audience's ass" pt 2 (part one being Baptism of Fire)

What an Incredible, Precise, Scathing commentary on the public's view of punishment. On how we treat "justice" in the news when it's two parties we don't know. On how hypocritical we want justice but don't want our actions to have any consequences -- we want it to be done but we don't want it to be our fault. She makes a HUGE point about people ignoring mental stress and only feeling bad when people are physically suffering. Before getting attached, people did want the prisoners to get hurt and feel remorse. In real life people are constantly wishing pain onto wrongdoers so they change their ways.

She's making excellent points, as well as the voice drama overall emphasizing the fact that it's the right thing to do to get attached. She's 100% correct, but by framing her as a villain, Yamanaka encourages the audience that we should care about people. We should find out about everyone's lives and get attached before making judgements about them. This project remains about human understanding and love and I am amazed.

And from a character perspective, I just loved her view of the situation! I was worried from the bits of the vd people were posting that she was just going to be painted as a flat, villainous character, but she's so so deep. I love a character who will get their hands dirty to make a better world for the innocent characters they care about. And her speech when hugging Es really revealed how much that burden weighs on her. She isn't violent for fun. She doesn't enjoy it. But her heart is so broken by a world of injustice, she will take on this painful responsibility since she has the power to and others don't.